At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

Paleontologist Robert
Bakker, whose wide-ranging and sometimes controversial theories about dinosaurs
are a significant element in modern thinking about them, brings those ideas to
children in the 3-7 age range through a well-written book whose narrative is
more challenging than the norm for this age group – and whose illustrations, by
well-known paleoartist Luis V. Rey, incorporate the most modern findings and
scientific understanding of what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived. Bakker
knows how to get to his audience: “Some dinosaurs were heavier than two dozen
elephants duct-taped together.” And he knows how to show young children the
ways in which science advances, for example when explaining how and why scientists
in the 19th century made serious mistakes while trying to figure out
what one dinosaur, Megalosaurus,
looked like – a section in which Rey’s “megalosaur wrong” and “megalosaur
corrected” illustrations are particularly outstanding in their contrast. Bakker
does a wonderful job of showing how the study of dinosaurs is in part a mystery
story, as scientists piece together – generally from pieces of dinosaurs! –
information on how the dinos lived and what they looked like. Bakker even takes
young children along on this journey of exploration, for example by explaining
how the search for dinosaur footprints in the 1830s led an early paleontologist
to conclude that Jurassic predators were, in effect, colossal birds. Continuing
uncertainties about dinosaurs get their due in this book as well. For instance,
there is the question of how it was possible for dinosaurs to live in what is
now Alaska, and how fossil leaves, in providing at least part of the answer,
make it more likely that carnivores had feathers. And there is of course the
extinction question, in which Bakker explains why he does not accept the
prevailing hypothesis about a huge meteorite strike killing off the dinosaurs
and instead believes that and other theories may need to be combined to arrive at
the truth. Bakker also does a fine job of connecting prehistory with young
children’s world today, by showing how mammals evolved during the age of
dinosaurs and then began to dominate the world after dinosaurs were gone – thus
explaining how “the dinosaur story is really our story, too.” The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs tackles
a large and complex subject in clear, understandable form, and hopefully will
serve as an introduction for yet another generation of young people to
prehistoric creatures that continue to fascinate so many of us today.

Crocodilians are among the
dinosaur-era groups that survived the mass extinction at the end of the
Cretaceous and continued evolving until today. And they certainly look
dinosaur-like to most people. But as big and powerful as real crocodiles and
their relatives are, they have also become favorites in children’s books, thanks
to artists who make them much smaller and rounder than they are in real life
and give them problems to handle that only seem large. Done well, as in Greg
Pizzoli’s The Watermelon Seed, a
crocodile-based book for very young readers can be thoroughly delightful,
thanks to the humor of the story and the fact that the croc is really just a
stand-in for a child. The particular croc in Pizzoli’s book absolutely loves
eating watermelon – indeed, the chance to write “CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!” in big
letters may have influenced Pizzoli to choose a crocodile as protagonist in the
first place. The croc’s problem is a small one indeed: a watermelon seed that he
accidentally swallows. Oh no! Now he starts imagining all the things that are
going to happen to him: vines coming out of his ears, his skin turning
watermelon pink, and so on. The poor croc gets so upset that he start crying
(yes, crocodile tears, although this is a book for very young children and
Pizzoli makes no overt reference to them). But then, wonder of wonders, a burp!
And the seed comes out, and the croc decides he had such a close call that he
is done with watermelon forever – well, except for “maybe just a teeny, tiny
bite.” With seeds, of course. The
Watermelon Seed is fun from start to finish, and can even be used by
parents as an object lesson in not overreacting to small things.

The small things in Jane
Yolen’s lovely, gentle board book, Hush,
Little Horsie, are colts, each rendered beautifully by Ruth Sanderson in
more-than-realistic style – that is, each is drawn anatomically accurately, but
portrayed with an extra-high level of focus on the eyes, the body position and
other elements to which Sanderson, interpreting Yolen’s text, wants to draw
attention. Those elements all have to do with sleep – this is a bedtime book
from start to finish, with each rhyme about horses in a different place ending,
“And when you are tired,/ She’ll watch as you sleep.” Beautifully colored
horses of various types are seen in the barn, out on the plain, at the seashore
and elsewhere, the gentle cadences of Yolen’s rhymes mixing soothingly with the
warmth of Sanderson’s illustrations to produce an overall feeling of quiet,
relaxation and motherly protection. The book ends with a human mother and her
daughter on the little girl’s bed, in a horse-themed child’s room, as the
mother assures her daughter that she
will be watching over the sleeping girl – who drifts off, cuddling a stuffed
horse, into a dream of the horses seen earlier in the book. Obviously intended
only for children with strong equine interests, Hush, Little Horsie will for them be a sweet little bedtime tale,
comforting and tender and thoroughly relaxing.

There Is a God! 1,001 Heartwarming (and Hilarious) Reasons to Believe. By
Richard Smith and Maureen McElheron. Tarcher/Penguin. $14.95.

Here’s a shamelessly
exploitative book filled with tiny snippets of amusement and loads of white
space – a pamphlet disguised as a $15 paperback. And darned if it isn’t worth
it. Richard Smith and Maureen McElheron simply throw together 1,001very, very
short comments on things that make life wonderful, sometimes for a moment and
sometimes forever (or at least for a very long time). Then they toss in 46
“miracles” (of modern life, that is), stir briskly, and lo, the result is a
book in which the juxtapositions are as delightful as the individual items – sometimes
more so.

Here you will find the
occasional touch of depth, such as #898: “Your unshakable faith in your faith.”
And the more-frequent touch of the risqué and/or trendy, such as #854, which is
both: “Trading sex for Invisaligns.” The somewhat thoughtful, such as #566:
“The mystery of genius.” The one-worders, such as #820: “Bach.” The faint
whispers of illegality, such as #915: “Disney World on Ecstasy.” The touches of
absurdity, such as #673: “Finding a little lost penguin while cleaning out your
freezer.” The touches of everyday wonder, such as #643: “Your little girl’s
eyes when she shakes a snow globe.” The items you have to think about for a
moment, such as #766: “Your sweetheart left her husband and needs a place to
stay.” Or #754, “God-fearing atheists.” And the items requiring no thought at
all, such as #450: “Make-up sex.”

And then there are the
“miracles.” No. 13: “Claiming your tree house as a home office is cool with the
IRS.” No. 19: “Ikea’s furniture now assembles itself.” No. 37: “An okay from
your doc to start smoking until you get over her.” Yes, that last one is weird,
and so are a lot of the items here, but because there are so many comments on
so many topics with so many degrees of wryness, it’s just fine to skip over
something you don’t like (or just don’t get) and move quickly on.

In fact, moving quickly on
is a big part of the point here, to the extent that there is any point at all
other than pure enjoyment. For it is only by zipping from item to item that you
get the full flavor of the juxtapositions that bring so much fun to There Is a God! For example, here are items 79 through 83: “He didn’t feel
threatened when you asked for a key.” “The club car.” “The tapas at that little
place in Barcelona.” “Singin’ in the Rain
gets better each time you see it.” “A morning-after pill that alleviates
serious hangovers.” And here are numbers 516 through 520: “You find a warm
waffle tucked into your JetBlue seat-back pocket.” “Freckles are back in
style.” “Air-conditioning.” “You unclogged the sink yourself.” “They didn’t
check your references.”

It helps not to think too
much about the snippets that don’t bear thinking about – that waffle on the
airplane, for example – and in fact this is not much of a book about thinking
at all. It’s a book that goes straight for the emotions, wiggling in by way of
the funnybone to implant occasional bits of seriousness here and there. It is
certainly no confirmation of any deity, and is not intended to be; but as a
compendium of the little things that make life better than it would be without
them, it is decidedly reassuring.

There is a certain sense of
desperation in some circles to portray the positive side of Islam as a
counterweight to the numerous acts of mass murder and viciousness perpetrated by
criminal fanatics in the name of the religion. It is certainly true that the
vast majority of those who practice Islam are peaceful and law-abiding, as are
the vast majority of those who practice other religions or adhere to none. But
it is also true that, at this stage in world history, Islam alone among
religions has spawned worldwide terrorist fanaticism that has claimed the lives
of many, many thousands of people of all faiths – Islam included. This makes
the attempt to portray Islam as a benign force difficult, perhaps especially so
in a book for children ages 4-8, which is what Deep in the Sahara is. Set in Mauritania, where Kelly Cunnane lived
from 2008 to 2009, the book is avowedly intended to show that the full-body
veils required to be worn by many Muslim women are not repressive but are simply
colorful expressions of culture. Accordingly, the book tells the story of a
young girl who very much wants to wear a malafa,
the full-body garment of Mauritania, but who is repeatedly told that she wants
one for the wrong reasons: it is not a garment intended for beauty, mystery, or
even longstanding tradition, various relatives tell her. Eventually, the girl
tells her mother that she wants a malafa
“so I can pray like you do,” and her mother approves and allows her to wear one
for prayer. Hoda Hadadi, an Iranian illustrator here producing her first book published
in the United States, presents a very pretty, very sanitized view of
Mauritanian and Islamic culture, with lovely stylized homes, prayer shown in
many houses’ windows, abare glimpse of
men here and there to indicate that they even exist in the same society as do
women, and other felicitous touches carefully designed to show off and showcase
what seems to be an entirely benign, if somewhat unusual, system. There is no
mention of any harsh realities, such as the recent announcement that an
anti-slavery charity has designated Mauritania as the nation with the highest
percentage of its population in slavery in the entire world. Parents who are
comfortable providing their children with a one-sided, extremely positive
viewpoint will like the simplicity and even-tempered nature of Deep in the Sahara. Those wanting their
children to have a more comprehensive view and understanding of the world, and
of the place of Islam within it, will need considerably more than this book to
provide it.

Religion underlies Anne Frank’s Chestnut Tree as well, in a
very different way. Anne and her family were Jewish, and her famous diary was
written as she and others hid in Amsterdam from the Nazis, who eventually found
them and murdered them in the name of expunging Jews and all their supposed
evils. This is a Step 3 book in the “Step into Reading” series, which means it
is for “Reading on Your Own” for ages 5-8. This is a serious book that tells
the story, in simplified but accurate form, of what happened to Anne and the
other people who tried to hide from the Nazis in the same place. Young readers
will find out about how Anne and the others lived day to day, who helped them,
and how their lives developed – including the pervasive fear with which they
all had to contend. The book’s title refers to a chestnut tree, outside the
hiding place, that Anne saw and about which she wrote: “Nature made Anne feel
that God had not left her.” The book explains that visitors can still visit the
place where Anne was hidden, but that the tree she saw was knocked down by a
storm in 2010 – yet saplings from its chestnuts are now growing in Amsterdam
and throughout the world. This message of hope is the basic one of the book,
which Jane Kohuth writes in a matter-of-fact narrative voice and Elizabeth
Sayles illustrates in very somber tones that are quite suitable to the story.
Despite the clear intent to provide uplift, this is not a pleasant story, and
the attempt to find a happy ending is less than successful – although readers
in the target age range may accept it. Although written so it can be handled by
those readers on their own, this is a book that might better be used as a
teaching tool by parents, who may want to read it – at least for the first time
– with their children, and provide an explanatory gloss beyond what the book
itself offers.

Religion is the foundation
of Christmas, of course, but the holiday’s secular elements dominate in many
households. And many families with kids ages 3-7 will enjoy My Pen Pal, Santa, for its unusual
handling of the letter-to-Santa notion. The book starts with a six-year-old
girl’s thank-you letter to Santa, written soon after Christmas – such an
unusual occurrence, Melissa Stanton suggests, that it leads to Ava receiving a
letter back from Santa himself. Ava continues writing to Santa throughout the
year, and Jennifer A. Bell amusingly shows Santa’s delight and surprise when he
gets letters at Valentine’s Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, and on other
occasions. There are a number of amusing elements here, including one about
Ava’s brother not believing in Santa, one about the Tooth Fairy’s wand working
like a flashlight (“it can’t zap anyone”), and one about swimming – which Ava
and her family do at the beach in summer, and Santa and his reindeer and elves
do with “friendly seals, walruses and polar bears.” Eventually the next
Christmas season rolls around, and Ava starts asking seasonally appropriate
questions about how Santa gets down the chimney, how he delivers to homes that
don’t have chimneys, and whether he makes it snow (“That’s Mother Nature’s
job,” Santa writes back). Eventually Ava makes a simple, special Christmas wish
that, it turns out, Santa is willing to grant, and the book ends very happily
indeed. This is an unusual seasonal offering that families seeking an
alternative to typical Christmas books will find attractive as the holiday
draws near.

The Boy on the Porch. By
Sharon Creech. Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins. $16.99.

The Great Unexpected. By
Sharon Creech. Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins. $6.99.

The League. By Thatcher
Heldring. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

Novels for preteens and
young teenagers tend to be in the action/adventure mode most of the time,
whether directed at boys or girls. They may be set in the past or future, in
this world or an alternative one, but they are generally plot-driven rather than
character-driven and tend to move ahead at a steady pace, if not a frantic one.
Sharon Creech’s books, though, are an exception. She writes novels that are
something like toned-down, detuned adult books of the type focused on character
interactions in semi-realistic settings, and she does this consistently – as in
The Boy on the Porch and The Great Unexpected (the latter
originally published last year and now available in paperback). Both these
books have improbable setups that Creech uses to explore the possible emotional
reactions of fairly realistic (although generally one-dimensional) characters.
Believe in the characters and you will be pulled into the novels and pulled
along with them; find them lacking and the plot disconnections will leave you disappointed.
The Boy on the Porch, for example,
starts with the depositing on the veranda of a rural American home of a boy who
is about six years old; the young owners of the house, John and Marta, know
only that someone will be back for him sometime (a poorly written note says
so). The boy can tell them nothing – he is mute – but he soon wends his way
into their hearts, becoming so integral to their thoughts and feelings that
they dread the inevitable day when someone will return to claim him. The rural
lifestyle portrayed here is quite idyllic and idealized, and the obvious
questions about why John and Marta simply take the boy in and worry about his
eventual departure, instead of going to authorities or taking any action
outside their small homestead, are glossed over. All this is typical of Creech,
whose taste for realism extends only so far. The boy turns out to have
considerable artistic talent, and he has something almost mystical in common
with the couple’s silent beagle and a cow that they found tied to their fence:
John and Marta seem to draw misplaced characters to themselves. But the boy,
Jacob, seems more a symbol than a full-fledged individual throughout the book,
and in fact John and Marta do as well: readers who get involved in the story
will respond emotionally to it, especially to the tear-jerker ending, but the
book has a certain obviousness and self-righteousness as it explores questions
of right and wrong. Still, it does
explore them, and with some subtlety, which is more than books for preteens and
young teens usually do.

Creech also mixes the
believable with the far-fetched in The
Great Unexpected, which starts with a boy falling out of a tree onto
protagonist Naomi Deane, who is the primary narrator of a book that in part
explores the ups and downs of Naomi’s relationship with her best friend, Lizzie
Scatterding, and in part is a mystery involving Ireland, to which the scene
shifts periodically (and rather jarringly). This book is written in a mixture
of styles that takes some getting used to – it can be hard to tell when a
chapter begins if it follows the one before immediately, or if several weeks
have passed. The book is also filled with alliterative names that some may find
charming and others irritating: Crazy Cora, “the dapper Dingle Dangle man,” and
so on. The underlying mystery of the book – that is, the mystery of the boy in
the tree – requires an eventual uniting of the two story lines, the one
involving Naomi and Lizzie and the other involving the Irish estate that shows
up periodically. There should be a sense of wonder within the realism here –
that is clearly what Creech is striving for – but the book does not hang
together particularly well, largely because of its confusing structure and also
because of a few too many narrative tricks, such as having the two women in
Ireland talk in what seems like a crazy way that turns out at the end to make
sense. Whether this plays fair with the reader will depend on whether that
reader is charmed by Creech’s quirkiness or comes to find it tiresome. Creech
certainly writes stories that are gentler and more heartfelt than most for a
preteen and young-teenage audience, and as such are a welcome relief from
formulaic adventure tales. But she has formulas of her own, and readers will
not necessarily find them as sweetly thoughtful as Creech obviously intends
them to be.

Thatcher Heldring’s The League is a far more typical tale
for this age group, and a far more boy-oriented one. It is the usual “sports
make the man” story, with the emphasis being on the right kind of sport, specifically with American football being good,
strong and manly and golf being some sort of lesser activity. Wyatt Parker
wants to play football, both because it will make him a tougher “real man” and
because it will impress his next-door neighbor, Evan, who naturally has eyes
only for the town’s star quarterback. Wyatt’s parents, though, are significant
obstacles, with their droning on about how people get hurt in football; so they have signed Wyatt up for golf camp, where
he emphatically does not want to go. Then Wyatt’s older brother, Aaron, drops
hints – which Wyatt picks up on – about some sort of secret football program,
and eventually lets Wyatt know (dramatically) that it is called the League of
Pain, and that Wyatt can join if he dumps golf camp. So of course Wyatt does
that, lying to the camp about needing to cancel because, he says, he is going
to Space Camp instead. And of course he then has to lie to his parents, too
(Evan, however, thinks the idea of Wyatt playing football is cool). And so
Wyatt gets into a cascade of lies, exposing considerable angst in the process:
“I wished I could run right through Mom and keep going. I was so sick of doing
whatever anybody told me to do when other people just did whatever they wanted.
In fact, this made me want to play football even more. …I wanted to kick a hole
in the wall. It wasn’t enough to tell me what to say, Mom also had to tell me
how to say it.” Well, of course sports, specifically football, are here
portrayed as a fine, socially acceptable outlet for this sort of aggressiveness.
And Wyatt gets subjected to more and more problems – for instance, when his
parents give him an old, worn pair of golf shoes that his father used to own
and says he kept for 30 years so he could pass them on. The characters in this
book are so unpleasant that it makes perfect sense for the League of Pain to
have teams called the Morons and the Idiots. Obviously Wyatt is going to get
caught (he does), and obviously his clueless (and really rather mean-spirited)
parents are going to punish him and make him miserable (they do), and obviously
Aaron is going to get in trouble as well (he does). And obviously nobody is
going to say that football itself is anything but wonderful (nobody does). The League, a (++) book, is so
unthinking an endorsement of the American version of macho sports that it could
almost be funny – except that there is nothing amusing in the attitudes it endorses
and expresses through Heldring’s cast of smarmy, thoroughly unpleasant
characters.

The ninth in PentaTone’s
excellent 10-release series of Wagner’s 10 mature operas tackles the most
difficult opera of the Ring cycle to
bring off – and as with all of these releases conducted by Marek Janowski, produces
a resounding success thanks to the conductor’s intimate familiarity with the
music and his willingness to take chances with tempos, characterizations and the
complexities of a live performance (this one dating to March 1, 2013). Siegfried (which Wagner originally
called Young Siegfried) is a very
talky opera, more so than usual in Wagner – whose music dramas are talky by
design and for that reason are unappealing to some operagoers. A voyage of
self-discovery climaxed by returns to events of earlier operas, Siegfried brings back Alberich and Mime
– giving the latter, whose portrayal owes much to Wagner’s anti-Semitism, more
prominence than in Das Rheingold.
Fafner also returns, the giant of the first opera now transformed into a dragon
that is conquered rather abruptly. Nothung, the sword shattered by Wotan’s
direct intervention in Die Walküre,
is forged again here in the opera’s most-famous scene; and Wotan himself,
rapidly becoming a shadow of the powerful (if flawed) god he has been before,
is back as well, rehashing much of the plot of what has come before (leading
the wonderful parodist of classical music, Anna Russell, to comment that Wotan
comes down from Valhalla to play “Twenty Questions” with Siegfried). The
comparatively static Siegfried stands
in strong contrast to the nearly frenetic activity of Die Walküre, although after the death of
Fafner and Mime, as we return to the fire-surrounded rock from the ending the
previous opera, and Siegfried discovers the sleeping Brünnhilde, there is certainly drama enough. Janowski builds the
opera toward this climactic moment throughout the nearly four-hour running time
of the recording, with the contrast between Tomasz Konieczny’s increasingly
feckless Wotan/Wanderer and the rather simple-minded, straightforward strength
and bravery of Stephen Gould’s Siegfried communicated particularly well. Christian
Elsner is suitably slimy as Mime, and his confrontation with the sly vengefulness
of Jochen Schmeckenbecher as Alberich is handled with skill. Violeta Urmana is
not an ideal Brünnhilde – Petra
Lang was more intense and fiery in Janowski’s Die Walküre – but Urmana certainly sings
well and with considerable emotion. Anna Larson as Erda – another revenant from
earlier in the cycle – handles her scene with Wotan well; Matti Salminen has
plenty of depth to his potent bass voice as Fafner; and Sophie Klußmann does a fine job with the small
but crucial role of the forest bird. Janowski again conducts with a sure hand
and very considerable intelligence, and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
turns in yet another of those first-rate performances that the players seem to
produce effortlessly. Siegfried is a
particularly difficult opera to bring off effectively, and Janowski’s success
here – a success that includes PentaTone’s consistently excellent SACD sound –
virtually guarantees that Götterdammerung,
the final Ring opera and concluding
entry in PentaTone’s Wagner-bicentennial sequence, will also be a splendid
production.

Wagner’s purely instrumental music – what
there is of it – tends to get short shrift in comparison to his operas, but
some of the opera overtures and preludes have become reliable staples of the
concert hall. Some, however, have not, a fact that makes Chandos’ new recording
led by Neeme Järvi particularly
welcome. This is actually a compilation of Järvi performances from 2009-2011, plus one (Der fliegende Holländer) not released before. The SACD is notable
for sound quality, length (a full 80 minutes), and inclusion of some rarities
along with the more-familiar works. Christoph
Columbus, a 1907 concert-overture version by Felix Mottl of Wagner’s 1835
opening for a stage play, may not be top-flight Wagner; but Faust, written in 1840, revised in 1855,
and originally planned as the first movement of a symphony, is certainly worth
more-frequent performances. So are the overtures to Wagner’s first two operas, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, in which the music may not sound “Wagnerian” as
that term later came to be used but is certainly well-made and effective. As
for the overture to Wagner’s third opera, Rienzi,
it is broad, exciting and exceptionally tuneful – deserving, like the opera
itself, of being considerably better known. The remaining works on this SACD
are familiar, and all are very well played by the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra – although Järvi’s
tempo choices are occasionally questionable and he does not come across as a
top-notch Wagner conductor in terms of sensitivity to the nuances of, say, Tristan and Meistersinger. Nevertheless, all the readings here are better than
serviceable, and the fine playing and sound, along with the intriguing mixture
of well-known and little-known music, makes this a very worthwhile recording
indeed.

Wagner’s pervasive influence extends to
the present day, and it is certainly noticeable in Jake Heggie’s fascinating Moby-Dick, adapted from Herman
Melville’s novel by librettist Gene Scheer. The DVD of the San Francisco
Opera’s 2012 production features four of the five singers who presented the
opera at its world première in
Dallas in 2010. The exception is Jay Hunter Morris as Captain Ahab (the role
was created by Ben Heppner); but Morris handles the increasingly mad captain
with plenty of fervor and intensity, making him an effective center around whom
the action swirls. Scheer’s libretto hews closely to the actions of Melville’s
book – which, it should be remembered, is in large part not an action/adventure novel, since much of it is taken up with
discussion and exploration of whales and the whaling life. Eliminating all of
that, as Scheer does, makes the story manageable as a libretto, and emphasizing
the tragic elements and psychological darkness of the book is an intelligent
decision – simply treating the whole work as a morality play, which is
essentially what Melville did, would result in an overly rigid presentation for
modern audiences. Nevertheless, Scheer is basically true to Melville’s
approach, and manages to retain enough of the author’s language to give the
opera a feeling both old-fashioned and up-to-date. Heggie does the same thing
with the music: in addition to Wagnerian elements and a few approaches borrowed
from Debussy and from Britten’s Peter
Grimes and Billy Budd, there are
distinct echoes of Philip Glass and other minimalist composers, plus an
overarching sense of the drama and emotional turmoil of film music – which,
indeed, is exactly what the work’s instrumental opening sounds like. The
music’s accessibility makes this a very approachable opera indeed: what Heggie
does is scarcely innovative, but it is very well tailored to audience
involvement and to the dramatic story line. Leonard Foglia’s stage direction –
the same in San Francisco as in Dallas – is also integral to the success of the
presentation. And this is an opera that is decidedly better served by DVD
presentation than it would be in an audio recording, where the comparative straightforwardness
of Heggie’s music would make the work less appealing than it is when seen as
the multimedia totality it is intended to be: opera has in fact always been a
multimedia format, and the projections and perspective shifts of this
production make Moby-Dick even more
so. There are occasional elements that do not work – renaming Ishmael as
Greenhorn is simply too obvious and comes across as a bit silly, for example –
but by and large, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and effective music drama, not
in the Wagnerian sense but in an equally valid post-Wagnerian world, where
Melville is as much a part of the United States’ shared literary and mythic
heritage as the Nibelungenlied
was part of Wagner’s and Germany’s in the 19th century.

Sometimes it is worth taking
a step back in time to hear how a real master of symphonic conducting handled
works that have in recent years become, if anything, over-familiar. Audite’s CD
of a 1969 Dvořák performance
and a 1962 one of Brahms, both by George Szell (1897-1970) with ensembles other
than the Cleveland Orchestra that he led with such distinction for so many
years (1946-1970), is one such worthwhile examination of the past. Szell did
not bend over backwards to create anything “new” or “different” in his
interpretations – instead, he carefully refined the work of conductors of
earlier times, seeking to evoke composers’ intentions for their music by
bringing forth the lines and the balance of instruments with precision and
detail that few conductors since have ever managed. Indeed, when the Cleveland
Orchestra under Szell played Mozart, it did so with the clarity of a chamber
ensemble, so perfectly did every single element balance every other one and so
well did Szell understand the precise workings of every instrument under his
command. The Czech Philharmonic and Swiss Festival Orchestra heard here (the
former in Dvořák’s Eighth, the
latter in Brahms’ First) do not bring quite that level of clear-headedness to
the music, but both ensembles play with fervor and understanding, and Szell’s
influence on them is clear in the excellent balance of their sections, the
rhythmic vitality of both readings, the very clear delineation of sections of
the music (recapitulations contrasted with the developments that come
immediately before, for example), and the overall sense of inevitability in the
flow of both works. These are robust performances but scarcely heavy ones:
Szell makes these Romantic symphonies grand but not portentous. The CD will be
something of a revelation for listeners familiar with the music but not with
Szell: there are many fine performances of both these works, but Szell’s method
of presenting them meticulously, as if they are fresh and new, makes them sound
fresh and new to the audience as well – including an audience in the 21st
century.

Most conductors, Szell
included, have paid little attention to lesser symphonic lights of the Romantic
era, such as Louis Spohr (1784-1859) and Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). The
rediscovery of the symphonies of these composers is largely a phenomenon of the
late 20th century as well as the 21st. And in some ways
it is a curious re-emergence, particularly in the case of Spohr, whose works
were so well-regarded in his time that Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado contains a line about “Bach,
interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven.” The very fine CPO recording in which
Howard Griffiths leads Spohr’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies – along with his
overture to a stage work called Der
Matrose (“The Sailor”) – puts Spohr’s strengths fully on display as well as
hinting at the reasons his music did not have much staying power after his
death. Spohr’s Symphony No. 4 (1832) is called Die Weihe der Töne, “The Consecration of
Sounds,” and is an avowed attempt to produce a new symphonic form through
musical illustration of the eponymous poem by Carl Pfeiffer (1803-1831).
Pfeiffer was librettist for two Spohr operas, and Spohr created his Fourth Symphony
partly as a tribute after his friend’s death and partly as an entry into the
burgeoning controversy about the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of “program
music.” This is an argument long since settled; and indeed, in the symphonic
realm, Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique
was written two years before Spohr’s Fourth. But it was a lively topic in
musical and intellectual circles in the 1830s, and Spohr’s Fourth – a huge
success when first performed, even among those who did not care for program
music – helped make the debates about tone-painting even livelier. The work as
a whole is very well made and has some innovative elements (notably in the
martial third movement and gentle finale), but to modern ears – and even to
those of the late 19th century – its pedestrian portions outnumber
its unusual ones. The lack of familiarity with Pfeiffer’s poem (fortunately
presented by CPO in both German and English) also makes it hard to find Spohr’s
Fourth fully involving. His Fifth was also a well-received work (although less
so than the Fourth), and it too is crafted expertly – but here the reason for
its lack of durability in the repertoire is fairly easy to explain. In this
symphony (and also in his Third), Spohr was overtly looking for an alternative
to Beethoven’s approach to symphonic structure – and in so doing invited
comparisons with Beethoven, which did not work to Spohr’s benefit. Spohr wanted
symphonies of dignity and close-knit development rather than the somewhat
sprawling and (by the standards of the time) ill-mannered ones that Beethoven
produced. The Fifth certainly works well by Spohr’s own standards – but it
tends to sound somewhat stodgy and even prim, lacking not only Beethoven’s
innovative approaches but also the forthright emotionalism of other Romantic-era
symphonies. The monothematic overture to Der
Matrose is as well-ordered and carefully assembled as the symphonies heard
here, and all this music is interesting in its historical context; but none of
it is likely to raise Spohr’s reputation much above its current modest level.

Clementi was not the
symphonist that Spohr was: Clementi’s four surviving mature symphonies were not
even published in the composer’s lifetime. Nor was Clementi much interested in
striving for new symphonic forms or moving ahead in new directions. His
symphonies show him to be a transitional figure, largely wedded to the
structures and harmonies of the past, handling them well and producing
pleasant, eminently listenable works tied closely to those of their direct
antecedents, Mozart and Haydn. Clementi’s Third, which makes considerable use
of the tune “God Save the King” as a theme and as a result is known as “The
Grand National,” is in many ways his most interesting symphony: the popular
tune is not only developed skillfully in the second movement but also brought
in as an “interruption” in the third and then used as part of the thematic
grouping in the finale. The Fourth Symphony, like the Third, is well organized
and conventionally assembled – and the same may be said of the Overture in C, which is actually the
opening movement of a symphony that is now lost. The Orchestra Sinfonica di
Roma under Francesco La Vecchia plays the symphonies and overture with
straightforward skill, and the Naxos sound is quite good. All these works are
reconstructions, made in the 1970s by Pietro Spada; the original manuscripts
have long since disappeared. Whatever their provenance, these pieces fit well
into the time of their composition and into what is known of Clementi’s
compositional style – and they are quite pleasant to hear, even if they are
scarcely earthshaking in any way.

Rachmaninoff’s First
Symphony was earthshaking for its composer, in a sense – and not a good one.
The work was a disaster at its première
in 1897 and not heard again until after Rachmaninoff’s death – although it has
since become reasonably popular. The symphony’s failure led Rachmaninoff to
abandon composition entirely for a time, not returning to it until after his
famous treatment with hypnotherapy and psychotherapy by Nikolai Dahl in 1900.
The likely differences in Rachmaninoff’s creative life if this symphony had
succeeded, even modestly, are impossible to know, but there is no question that
its failure became a seminal event in Rachmaninoff’s future endeavors as
conductor and pianist as well as his eventual return to composition. Leonard
Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony get the youthful exuberance of the symphony
right in their new recording, although Slatkin does not cope especially well
with the work’s sprawl and its tendency to meander, wandering off its emotional
track for a while before finding its way back. The orchestra plays well but
without the sumptuous string tone and warm brass that would fit Rachmaninoff –
particularly this symphony – to better effect. Therefore, this well-recorded
Naxos CD, which completes Slatkin’s Rachmaninoff symphonic cycle, gets a (+++)
rating. The symphony is paired with The
Isle of the Dead, a highly atmospheric and suitably gloomy tone poem
pervaded by the Dies irae that
Rachmaninoff used so often. Slatkin handles it skillfully, although it is less evocative
than it can be: the ghostly stillness with which it begins and ends, for
example, is here on the matter-of-fact side. These are good but not particularly
idiomatic presentations of significant works for which Slatkin seems to have
some affinity, but not enough for complete involvement.

The subtitle of Catherine
Thimmesh’s fascinating book about paleoart – that is, artists’ renderings of the appearance of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures – is one of those very good questions that ought to be
asked more frequently than they are. How do
we know what dinosaurs looked like? Many people who are interested in dinosaurs
know that views of the ancient creatures that dominated Earth for 200 million
years have changed dramatically over time, with recent scientific analyses
indicating that they were warm-blooded and frequently had feathers being only
the latest modifications of prior views of the dinosaur world. But few people
really think about how the illustrations of dinosaurs, ubiquitous everywhere
from scientific treatises to children’s books, have changed as our knowledge of
the deep past has improved. Thimmesh uses illustrations by six modern renderers
of dinosaur appearance to show how today’s expert artists show dinosaurs, how
these artists’ own conceptions have changed as knowledge has increased, and how
today’s pictures of dinosaurs and their world differ, often dramatically, from
those done in the past. The six are Stephen Czerkas, Sylvia Czerkas, Mark
Hallett (who coined the term “paleoart”), Tyler Keillor, Greg Paul and John
Sibbick. These are not well-known names outside their rarefied field, but their
illustrations are pervasive in works from the technical to the entertaining.
The husband-and-wife Czerkas team, for example, created the models that were
used for the raptors in the movie Jurassic
Park – but this book shows that more-recent science leads to an entirely
different look for those dinosaurs, and the juxtaposition of the two renditions
is extremely striking. So is the difference between a famous 1901 drawing of a
hulking Triceratops by Charles R. Knight – contrasted with Hallett’s portrayal
of active, agile Triceratops whose appearance is so different that they almost
seem to be different animals from Knight’s altogether. And then there is the
revelation that no single skeleton of a Triceratops has ever been discovered:
the well-known specimens in museums worldwide are composites made from partial
specimens. Thimmesh’s book is filled with narrative revelations like this, as
well as fascinating information about illustration. Apatosaurus, for example,
is traditionally shown wallowing in swampland – but no fossils have ever been
found in ancient waterbeds, and the consensus today is that this was a
land-dwelling dinosaur. And Seismosaurus, possibly the longest dinosaur of all,
is known only from a single skeleton. Packed with pictures and facts, Scaly, Spotted, Feathered, Frilled is a
fascinating look at how little we know about animals about which we think we
know a great deal. It is a book about how much scientists and artists alike can
do with what is really only a small amount of information. And it is about the
limitations of even the best investigations of the deep past: Thimmesh devotes
a chapter to the color of dinosaurs, which with current technology is simply
impossible to know, rendering every single drawing of them speculative in this
important regard. Three Sibbick renditions of Parasaurolophus make the point in
visually stunning fashion while Thimmesh makes it in clear prose and the
artists address it directly, as in this comment by Paul: “‘Except for the
improbability of gaudy colors like pink and purple, any pattern is both
speculative and possible.’” There are many, many dinosaur books out there,
nearly all of them amply illustrated. Readers of Thimmesh’s book will see all
those others in a new way.

There are many books about
dolphins available, too, but in this case as well a new Houghton Mifflin release
will have readers looking at the animals in a different way. The Dolphins of Shark Bay is about the
only known tool-using dolphins on Earth, ones that find and tear off sponges,
use them to uncover edible fish, drop the sponges to eat the fish, remember
where they dropped the sponges so they can go back and get them again, and then
repeat the process. These dolphins live in the waters off Australia and have
been studied for more than 25 years by a research team led by Janet Mann, whose
work is at the center of this entry in the always-excellent “Scientists in the Field”
series. Pamela S. Turner provides some basic biographical information on Mann,
who initially studied baboons before becoming enthralled by dolphins, and then
gets into details of what Mann has learned about these highly intelligent
aquatic mammals. For example, Mann discovered that humans were unwittingly
raising infant mortality rates among one group of dolphins, at a place called
Monkey Mia, by feeding them: dolphin mothers who took food from people learned
to beg from beachgoers and boaters, but did not spend enough time nursing their
calves or protecting them from sharks. As a result, the calves had a high
mortality rate: “Monkey Mia’s baby dolphins starved in a stew of good
intentions.” This is a nuanced book, scarcely a condemnation of human behavior
toward dolphins, but it is also a book that shows again and again just how
delicate – and amazing – the balance of nature can be. Scott Tuason’s
photographs bring the scientific research to life in truly remarkable ways: a
dolphin leaps high out of the water, possibly to dislodge an irritating lamprey
or possibly just for fun; a shark makes a meal of a dugong carcass; a newborn
dolphin calf pops above water to breathe; a dolphin hydroplanes in the shallows
to catch a fish; another holds a trumpet shell out of the water and shakes it.
These and other photos, along with Turner’s narrative, never quite answer a
question posed early in the book: why
are dolphins intelligent? This is a query with profound implications – after
all, sharks have small brains, as Turner points out, but are extremely
successful in evolutionary terms. Brain power is only one survival strategy –
one to which we humans gravitate, since we share it, but not necessarily the
“best” in any significant way. Turner ends the book with a discussion of
whether dolphins can be said to have culture, and what “having culture” really
means. Mann has, of course, thought long and hard about this, and although
neither she nor Turner offers or can offer a definitive answer to the question,
Mann certainly has enough understanding to make a trenchant observation: “‘The
dolphins’ interactions with each other,’ she says, ‘are far richer, more
complex, and more interesting than any interactions they have with us.’” The Dolphins of Shark Bay raises some
difficult and unanswerable questions about these marine mammals – questions
that scientists like Mann study for nearly a lifetime without finding answers,
but while learning a great deal about some of the other inhabitants of Earth
and sharing that knowledge through sensitively written, beautifully illustrated
books like this one.

The title The Invisible Boy conjures up images of
superheroes, of comic-book-style escapades, of great battles between good and
evil. It certainly does not make a reader expect the gentle and touching story
that Trudy Ludwig and Patrice Barton actually produce. For this is the tale of
a boy who is not really invisible but
who feels invisible –largely ignored
and occasionally mocked by classmates, receiving little attention from his
teacher because of his quiet unobtrusiveness, and being left out of everyday
activities because he just doesn’t seem to be there. Much has been made
recently of overt bullying and attempts to stop it, but what happens in The Invisible Boy is something subtler
and in its own way equally painful. Brian is simply treated by most people as
if he does not exist, receiving neither the positive attention of those who
excel nor the negative focus of those who act out. Ludwig gives Brian a special
talent: he likes to draw, creating superheroes “with the power to make friends
wherever they go.” But Ludwig stops short of making the story maudlin: she
finds a way out of invisibility for Brian when a new student, Justin, joins the
class, and Brian, who is sweet and good-hearted but just not very
attention-getting, uses one of his drawings to make Justin, who is Korean, feel
welcome after other students mock the bulgogi he brings for lunch. Justin soon
gets included in school activities, while Brian remains invisible to the other
students – but Justin insists on starting to include Brian, and soon, Brian’s
talents begin to blossom and he becomes more and more visible. Literally so:
Barton moves the story along visually with great skill, initially showing Brian
in thin black-and-white amid the colors of school life, then gradually filling
him in and filling him out as he is accepted and noticed by more and more
classmates, until he is finally just as visible and colorful as they and
participates to the same degree. The
Invisible Boy is quite clearly intended as a teaching tool: Ludwig, a
frequent speaker on bullying prevention, includes discussion questions and
recommended readings for kids and adults at the end. And yes, the book is
somewhat on the preachy and obvious side in some of its narration. But it
highlights a real issue for many families, works on its own as a well-wrought
story, and (thanks to Barton) really shows
what left-out children feel like – potentially making it easier for families to
discuss the fears and worries of real-life Brians.

Kids who are left out and
dogs that are left out can make a great combination: children not fortunate
enough to have a Justin through whom they can make peer connections may find
themselves feeling much more a part of everyday life thanks to a canine in the
family. Indeed, one story in Lucky Dog,
C. Alexander London’s “Big Dogs,” is specifically about bullying and the
breakthrough that an adopted dog brings to a boy named Simon who is teased
mercilessly because he sometimes lisps. This is one of the dozen stories, by a baker’s
dozen authors, in a book that works better than many anthologies because the
tales (tails?) are genuinely connected through the Pawley Rescue Center, a
fictional and almost too-good-to-be-true place where rescued dogs await the
permanent homes that they find with entirely appropriate families throughout the
book. Would that all pounds, kennels and rescue centers were as effective as
Pawley, and staffed by so many wonderful, caring and deeply involved people as
the ones in this book! And would that all potential adopters were as sensitive
to the needs of lost and abandoned animals as are the families here! In Marlane
Kennedy’s “Package Deal,” for example, two rescued dogs have bonded, but a
family can only afford to adopt one – and that dog, Bagley, so misses his
shelter friend, Lena, that the family realizes Bagley must go back to the
shelter. But then Rudy, the boy who chose Bagley, arranges to have Lena adopted
by the next-door neighbor by promising to help with all aspects of Lena’s care,
and the neighbor agrees, and so two
dogs are adopted; and Rudy is true to his word; and everything works out
beautifully. Sometimes life would be a lot better if it imitated art, and it is
wonderful to report that all royalties from sales of Lucky Dog, an estimated $0.22 to $1.60 per copy, are being donated
to an animal-welfare nonprofit group called RedRover. But of course that will
not be the reason most people will buy this heartwarming story collection. The
stories work as stories, not merely
as teaching tools – much as The Invisible
Boy works on its own despite its larger agenda. In Lucky Dog, there is Leslie Margolis’ “Bird Dog and Jack,” in which
a boy whose parents have divorced gets a dog for his 11th birthday
and realizes that, even though times will be difficult for the split-up family,
for now he can count on some stability. There is Tui T. Sutherland’s amusing
story from a dog’s point of view, “The Incredibly Important True Story of Me!”
– in which the self-described “Pomeranian Perfection Personified” and his very best canine friend get to
go home together with just the right family. Other contributing authors are
Kirby Larson, Ellen Miles, Teddy Slater, Michael Northrop, Randi Barrow, Jane
B. Mason & Sarah Hines Stephens, Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, and Allan Woodrow. Story
after story explores the wonderfulness of human-canine bonding and the
importance of adopting from a shelter, a teachable moment for parents who may
be understandably upset because President Obama’s family, like far too many
others, chose not to adopt even
though shelters have large numbers of purebreds as well as mixed breeds. Lucky Dog is filled with stories of dogs
lucky enough to be chosen to go home with just the right families – but the
book could just as well have been called Lucky
Human, for this is a relationship that decidedly works both ways.

Here are some books aimed
squarely at existing fan bases – not deep, not at the height of the authors’
creativity, but certainly enjoyable for those who just cannot get enough of the
characters, human and otherwise. “Otherwise” would include Pete the Cat, the
sad-eyed but usually peppy creation of Kimberly and James Dean, whose adventure
in Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses
is nothing particularly special but will be amusing for kids in the target age
range of 4-8 – especially the younger half of that age grouping. The whole
story here involves “COOL, BLUE, MAGIC sunglasses” that cheer Pete up when he
is feeling down – after he gets them from Grumpy Toad, who is not grumpy on this particular day,
thanks to the sunglasses. Pete feels much better with the glasses on, and goes
along using them to cheer up Squirrel, Turtle and Alligator. Upon donning the
sunglasses, each character proclaims in identical language how good things now
seem – the exact repetition is one reason the book will appeal mainly to very
young readers – and each finishes the comment with a grammatically incorrect,
“I’m feeling ALRIGHT!”Surely it would
not have hurt the Deans to make that word, correctly, into two, ALL RIGHT. But
instead it is emphasized, in capital letters, in all its incorrect glory,
repeatedly. Ah well. As for the story, Pete eventually breaks the glasses, but
then finds out that he didn’t need them anyway: Wise Old Owl tells him, “‘Just
remember to look for the good in every day.’” This is a little sappy and not at
all surprising, but it buttons up the book nicely enough, and the final
illustration – showing all the characters on skateboards except for Grumpy
Toad, who is riding a motorcycle – is a high point. The final non-word,
“ALRIGHT,” is not.

The verbiage is just fine, if
not quite as fancy as usual, in two spinoffs of the Fancy Nancy series by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser – who
does the covers for both these books, but not the interior illustrations. Fancy
Nancy is a wonderful character, bubbly and ebullient and enamored of all things
French and of all sorts of big words. Her personality is shrunken somewhat in
these two books, though, because they are designed for early readers – again,
ages 4-8, with special appeal, most likely, to those in the younger half of
that age spread. Apples Galore! is a
Level 1 book in the “I Can Read!” series – written with “simple sentences for
eager new readers,” like other books at the same level. There are a few
slightly fancy words here – autumn, orchard, tasty – but they are scarcely at
Nancy’s usual “fanciness” level, which would not work for this age group. Nancy
herself narrates the book but is not its focus: a troublemaking classmate,
Lionel, is the central character, “crying wolf” repeatedly during a field trip and
then getting into some real (but mild) trouble requiring a rescue by Nancy and
Ms. Glass, the kids’ teacher. Nancy herself is a more-attractive central
character than she has a chance to be here. She is at the center of Budding
Ballerina, but her at-home performance focuses as much on her dad’s
clumsiness as on Nancy herself – again, a bit of a miscalculation in terms of
the book’s structure. In fact, Glasser’s cover – showing Nancy, her little
sister, JoJo, and the family dog, Frenchy – portrays a more-interesting scene
than anything that actually happens in the story. Nancy and ballet would seem to
go well together – Nancy’s fondness for tutus is one element of her
considerable charm – but this tale falls a bit flat, even though it does
contain, of necessity, some “fancy” ballet terms (en pointe, arabesque, pirouette and others).

Well, there is certainly no
question about where the focus is in the thick and handsome hardcover, One Direction: Where We Are—Our Band, Our
Story. This is strictly, 100% for devoted fans of Harry Styles, Liam Payne,
Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik. The band members may or may not
have had something to do with writing the book – no author is credited, but
there is a legal statement to the effect that “One Direction assert the moral
right to be identified as the authors of this work.” There’s not all that much
to the writing, in any case – no one is going to buy this book for the
deathless prose or the entirely ordinary comments: “We’ve been so lucky because
we’ve been able to go to some incredible places.” “Wherever we go the fans are
always amazing, and they mean everything to us.” “I think with every album we
get more and more confident with our sound.” No, the words are not the thing
here – the photos are what fans will want. And there are lots and lots of them,
serious ones and clowning ones, on-stage ones and behind-the-scenes ones, ones
of the band performing and ones of its members relaxing, ones of fans
(including a delightful one of two teenage girls flanking their grandmother, or
maybe great-grandmother, who is proudly wearing a “One Direction” T-shirt) and
ones of instruments. The extreme closeups will let fans gaze longingly at their
personal favorite heartthrob, and the smiles and laughter shown repeatedly in
group and individual photos will let fans fantasize about how wonderful the
band’s life must be. Bands like One Direction come and go, often going even
more quickly than they arrive – especially in our media-saturated age, when the
next big thing always waits just around the corner to displace the current big
thing. Still, One Direction fans who are living strictly in the here-and-now,
and want a great big souvenir of this particular time over which they can ooh
and aah, will not be one bit disappointed in One Direction: Where We Are—Our Band, Our Story. And of course,
they alone are the people for whom the book was created and, like the band
itself, neatly packaged.

The late movie critic Judith
Crist made an interesting distinction between “masterpiece” and “masterwork.”
The former, she believed, was just what most people think it is: something
superlative in its field. But the latter, she thought, was not a synonym for
“masterpiece” but the description of a work by
a master that was scarcely of masterpiece quality. This is what comes to mind
when reading We Are What We Pretend to
Be, which contains the novella Basic
Training, written by Kurt Vonnegut two years before Player Piano was published, and the piece-of-a-novel If God Were Alive Today, which scarcely
stands on its own and even in its existing form could use some polishing. Neither of these works is polished, the
early one because it is a rather cloying piece of juvenilia and the late one
because Vonnegut did not live to do much with it. Certainly Vonnegut’s legions
of fans will welcome the chance to read his earliest, previously unpublished
work, and the one he was working on when he died in 2007 at the age of 84. And
certainly both of these works have some attractions. Basic Training is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story whose
pacing and characterization are far more interesting than its decidedly mundane
plot. If God Were Alive Today
features some trademark Vonnegut acerbity in its budding portrait of a comedian
who, like Vonnegut himself, looks primarily to seriousness and tragedy for sources
of humor; and this snippet of what would have been a novel includes some very
pointed dialogue sections written as if for the stage (where one can imagine they
might have eventually ended up). Nevertheless, We Are What We Pretend to Be, whose title is taken from one of
Vonnegut’s more-famous assertions, is thin gruel even for Vonnegut fans,
offering sidelights on his brilliance rather than anything that speaks firmly
to it. A masterwork, then, but surely no masterpiece.

Whether Eoin Colfer’s
eight-book Artemis Fowl series is a “master”
anything is a matter of opinion – although the novels are certainly written
well and distinctively, and with plenty of flair designed to appeal primarily
to a young-adult audience. The way the series eventually turns back on itself,
the end becoming the beginning, is scarcely original but is well handled; and
the characters of Artemis and some of his compatriots and enemies have more
depth than in most SF/fantasy sequences, with Artemis himself changing
personality and motivation as the series progresses (although, it must be said,
not always completely convincingly). The series is being turned bit by bit into
graphic novels, of which the first appeared in 2007 and the second in 2009. Now
the third, Artemis Fowl: The Eternity
Code, is available, and although it is a worthy successor to the two
previous adaptations, it is somewhat too talky and text-heavy to be a fully
effective graphic-novel presentation. The events of the third novel – and
therefore of the adaptation by Colfer and Andrew Donkin – revolve around the
theft of the “C Cube” by Artemis’ enemy, Jon Spiro, and its eventual recovery. But
the essentially simple plot is not the main point of the book. This is the
novel in which Artemis’ bodyguard, Butler, is shot in the chest and almost
dies, forcing Artemis to confront his criminal ways and his attitudes toward
others with a new level of introspection. Holly Short eventually heals Butler,
but he becomes substantially older in the process. And at the book’s end, both
Butler and Artemis are mind-wiped by the Lower Elements Police – only to regain
their memories in the next book. Being a middle-of-a-series book, The Eternity Code is not a good place
for someone unfamiliar with the Artemis
Fowl stories to enter into Colfer’s world; and this is as true for the
graphic novel as for the original book. Those who already know Artemis, though,
will enjoy the way he and the other characters – including Butler, Holly and
Spiro – are portrayed by Giovanni Rigano, whose action scenes are effective
even though he uses a very ordinary square-and-rectangular-panel design that
makes this graphic novel seem more like an old-fashioned comic book. Paolo
Lamanna’s colors are attractive but not always logical, as scenes change hue
for no apparent reason and in ways that sometimes compromise their clarity. And
while the considerable amount of dialogue is true to the original book and
certainly in keeping with Colfer’s storytelling, it is just too much for a
graphic novel, especially one printed in a rather small size (6¼ inches wide by
9¼ inches tall). One example among many: Spiro and two henchmen appear in a
small panel (one-eighth of a page) along with four dialogue balloons – the
result being so overcrowded that the characters are almost blocked by their
dialogue. This is a perfectly fine adaptation but not a particularly
distinguished one, and not a graphic novel that takes full advantage of the
visual impact of which this medium is capable.

On the other hand, at least
it is clear where The Eternity Code
fits within the Artemis Fowl sequence. The
Enchanter Heir occupies a much stranger position within the Heir Chronicles: it is the fourth book
of a trilogy. The Warrior Heir
(2006), The Wizard Heir (2007) and The Dragon Heir (2008) collectively made
up an effective three-book group, with different central characters in each
novel but enough commonalty of setting and approach to tie the trilogy
together. Cinda Williams Chima created a world of colors for her books – not
literally in the manner of graphic novels, but in ways that permeated the plots
of the three works. Gold and silver for wizards, purple for enchanters, green
for sorcerers, blue for warriors, red for soothsayers – the colors were
practically characters of their own in the Heir
Chronicles, and Chima’s use of them rendered what was essentially just
another sword-and-sorcery epic more interesting than it would otherwise have
been. It was so interesting, in fact,
that Chima could not quite let go of it – or her fans could not, which amounts
to the same thing. So she agreed to extend the sequence by two more books, The Enchanter Heir and a fifth book that
may be called The Sorcerer Heir
(although this is not a firm title). The
Enchanter Heir is emphatically not a good series entry point, any more than
The Eternity Code is in the Artemis
Fowl sequence. A very great deal has occurred before The Enchanter Heir begins, and while Chima provides a brief
Prologue, it by no means serves as an adequate introduction to her world. Nor
could it, really: the Heir Chronicles
are packed with characters and events, and the only way to keep up with
everything is to read the series from the start (because even though the books
have different central characters, the same characters appear again and again
and are referred to even when they are not present). The protagonists of The Enchanter Heir are Jonah Kinlock, a
17-year-old assassin and survivor of the Thorn Hill Massacre, and Emma Claire
Greenwood, who bursts into Jonah’s life after finding a note of warning in her
dying grandfather’s hand. The two initially connect, rather amusingly, over a
guitar that Emma has built – she is trained in music, not magic – and after
some awkwardness in which both talk about music as being like sex, and a
dramatic fight in which Emma ends up tied on the basement floor, it becomes
clear to readers (if it has not already) that Jonah and Emma are destined, one
way or another, for each other. Their encounter in the middle of the book sets the
stage for the happenings in the second half, by the end of which the two
protagonists know a great deal more about each other and are not on the best of terms, to put it
mildly. And there Chima stops the book, rather too abruptly, making it clear
that the next book will again have to
use Jonah and Emma as protagonists – or at least very important characters. Heir Chronicles fans will relish this
return to Chima’s world and the fast, sure pace of her writing, although the
book’s rather contrived ending will frustrate those who would prefer a more
definitive conclusion. Presumably that is what Chima will provide in the
sequence’s fifth book – unless, of course, she decides that what was once a
trilogy and is now a tetralogy deserves to grow even beyond its still-unwritten
fifth entry.

Comparisons between the great
performers of today and those of the past are moot: there is no way to know for
sure how many of the best classical musicians of earlier times would stack up
against ones trained in today’s concert halls and recording media. But there
remains a fascination with famous names of the past, even as new generations of
virtuoso performers draw greater attention from audiences whose members know
little, if anything, about such famous musicians as Maria Callas and Leonard
Bernstein. Thus, it is best to consider a release such as the Mozart disk by
clarinetist Martin Fröst
entirely on its own, without comparing Fröst’s technique or interpretations to those of earlier first-rate
clarinet virtuosi. Fröst is in
fact a very considerable player by any standards, with excellent breath control
and a lovely sense of line. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto receives from him a
warm, flowing reading, perhaps not quite as sensitive to the nuances of period
performance as are some renditions, but very well thought-through and performed
with a highly attractive mixture of elegance and élan. Fröst himself is the conductor here,
and he handles the role in fine fashion – although it must be said that the
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is such a well-controlled ensemble that it
scarcely needs a leader for this music. The remaining pieces on this
excellent-sounding SACD are also played at a very high skill level. There is a
fine sense of camaraderie, of the sheer enjoyment of sitting down to make
wonderful music together, in the Kegelstatt
Trio as performed by Fröst
with Antoine Tamestit and Leif Ove Andsnes – indeed, this rather dark-hued
work, in which clarinet and viola complement each other to such fine effect,
here has a feeling of barely suppressed perkiness beneath the warmth of its sound.
The short and rarely performed Allegro in
B-flat Major (K Anh. 91) is also very nicely played, functioning as an
encore of sorts and displaying Fröst’s
ability to integrate his sound with that of a full string quartet. The only
peculiarity of the disc is its short length, especially for the price: 54
minutes. Given the fact that Fröst,
although a fine performer, is not exactly a marquee name in classical music, it
would have been nice to showcase his abilities at greater length.

Maria Callas is a marquee name, even 35 years after
her death, and those who continue to put her on a pedestal will rejoice at the
ICA Classics release of her Covent Garden Medea
from June 30, 1959. A monophonic recording under the direction of an
undistinguished conductor, this release is really directed only at those who
continue to idolize Callas or want to try to compare her voice with those of
modern opera stars – despite all the inherent impossibilities of doing so.
Callas did a tremendous amount with a voice that was not necessarily of the
first water: she brought drama and intensity to everything she did, and Medea gave her a chance to emote in an
over-the-top way that might even be a bit too much. With the exception of Jon
Vickers, the remaining cast members in this production are adequate but not
especially worthy of extended attention – so the opera, in which Medea is
already the dominant figure, becomes even more a display piece for Callas than
did other works. She certainly gives this performance her all, but unlike her
acclaimed performance of a year earlier, this one shows evidence of some vocal
strain, some difficulty handling the extended passages and the very considerable
vocal demands that Cherubini created. It is by no means a bad performance –
indeed, from a strictly dramatic standpoint, it is an excellent one – but some
seams are showing in Callas’ voice, and in an opera as focused on her character
as this one is, those seams appear more troubling than they otherwise might.
This is a (+++) recording, its sound as well as its conducting quite adequate
but scarcely outstanding, and it will be of greatest appeal to those with a
particular interest in Callas and what all the fuss was, and continues to be,
about her.

The Enigma Variations DVD featuring Leonard Bernstein and the BBC
Symphony Orchestra is also a limited-appeal (+++) item, presenting a
performance from April 14, 1982. Few classical-music lovers will relish
spending $25 for a single, 39-minute piece, even one led by this conductor. In
fact, this is a DVD whose bonus material may be what draws buyers: there is a
25-minute rehearsal of Elgar’s work shown, including an interview with
Bernstein, who was always thoughtful and insightful about the music he led and
is certainly so here. Even today, many music lovers think that the primary job
of a conductor is to lead live concerts from the podium – when, in reality, the
vast majority of a conductor’s work must be done before the performance, in exploring the nuances of the music and
making sure the orchestral musicians understand exactly how a particular
section should be phrased, accentuated and paced, and how that segment fits
into the conductor’s total conception of the work. Bernstein was particularly
adept at what is essentially a teaching role, and while the rehearsal excerpted
here scarcely deals with all the rhythmic, pacing and balance elements of the Enigma Variations, it includes enough of
them to give a fine sense of how careful and thoughtful an orchestra leader
Bernstein was. His decisions were not always universally praised by musicians
or critics, especially because of his overuse of rubato in many works, but they always sprang from careful study and
high intelligence – some of which comes through on this DVD. Nevertheless, this
is purely a specialty item, offering a single high-quality performance of one
particular work and some insight into a famed conductor whose name means far
less to the younger members of today’s classical-music audience than it did to
listeners 25 years ago and more.

October 17, 2013

The Adventures of Gremlin. By
DuPre Jones. Drawings by Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $17.95.

Recent decades have brought
a substantial upsurge in consideration and reconsideration of fairy tales as
stories for adults – which is what they were for centuries, before Victorian
and post-Victorian sanitization. From Freudian interpretations to feminist
critiques, the venerable oral histories and stories of wonder have been viewed,
re-viewed and done to a turn to serve a bewildering variety of academic and
sociopolitical agendas. One result has been the creation of all-new fairy tales
that incorporate, accessorize, mock, expand or otherwise play upon the old ones
of Perrault and the Grimm brothers – thus falling into the same category as the
stories of Hans Christian Andersen, who created his own tales so effectively
that many people still believe he merely retold existing ones. One of the very best
contemporary authors to march in Andersen’s footsteps is Alethea Kontis, who
has figured out how to give fairy tales some thoroughly modern twists while
remaining true to their essential undercurrents and making them appealing to preteen and young teenage readers –
whose sophistication today is at a level quite different from that of their
peers just a few decades ago. Kontis’ Enchanted
was an absolutely remarkable mashup of multiple fairy tales, twisted into a Möbius strip of a story whose
romantic, heroic, magical and hilarious elements were constantly tripping over
each other, to the delight of absolutely everyone (even including most of the
book’s characters). It is wonderful that Kontis has decided to turn Enchanted into merely (merely?) the
first book in a series called The
Woodcutter Sisters, because the second book, Hero, is every bit as…well…enchanting as the first. The “back
story” here is of the seven children of a not-so-simple woodcutter and his
wife, whose name is Seven because she is the seventh child of her parents,
whose contact with the fey provides the underlying magical connection for many
of the happenings. Seven herself, who speaks little because her words have the
force of commands whether she wants them to or not, has seven children of her
own, their appearances and powers largely (but not entirely!) drawn from the
old rhyme that begins, “Monday’s child is fair of face.” Kontis complicates
matters thoroughly as she draws on, distorts, remakes and occasionally
eviscerates the entire fairy-tale world. Enchanted
was primarily the story of Sunday; Hero
is primarily the tale of Saturday – tall, statuesque, lacking any magical
abilities (she thinks), wishing for adventure, good with a sword (especially
one that contains a bit of magic), hotheaded, unromantic and something of a
whirlwind (whose mouth tends to run away with her, leaving her glad that her words do not have the force of
commands). However, any reader who thinks he or she can figure out where Kontis
is going with this combination of characteristics has not reckoned with just
how good a writer Kontis is. For every expected element of Hero (Saturday wishes for adventure and finds when she gets it that
it is not at all what she wished for), there are numerous unexpected ones (she
gets stuck in a mountain so high that Time cannot reach it, where two of her
companions are a young, somewhat enchanted skirt-wearing nobleman and a chimera
that is repeatedly transformed into stranger and stranger two-creature combinations
because of the misfiring, dragon-fueled magic of a blind witch). Mistaken
identities and not-understood consequences abound in Hero, and the book is so fast-paced in so many directions that it
would be a chore to follow if all the directions were not so tremendously
entertaining. Hero is every bit as
good as Enchanted – a high
compliment. And it not only enthralls from start to finish but also whets one’s
appetite for the next installment of this utterly captivating series – a higher
compliment still.

There will be no followup to
The Adventures of Gremlin, because
both its creators have passed on – and that is a shame, because the oddly
skewed and pun-filled world of this book is another fairy-tale delight,
although admittedly a lesser one than that of Kontis’ novels. Note that the
title does not refer to a gremlin:
Gremlin is the name of the book’s protagonist, a little girl whose brother is
named Zeppelin. And those are just mild examples of the peculiar sense of humor
of DuPre Jones (1935-2012), whose sole published book is this one, which dates
to 1966. The story is not quite as timeless as the best fairy tales – for
example, 21st-century readers will likely not understand why the two
kingdoms in the story are called Etaoin and Shrdlu, because few people today
know what a linotype is and what those letter sequences signify (suffice it to
say that they are roughly equivalent to Qwertyuiop and Asdfghjkl on a computer
keyboard, but are thankfully easier to try to pronounce). But today’s readers
will certainly enjoy Jones’ playfulness with a wide variety of fairy-tale
tropes, from the unhappy, adventure-seeking children of a woodcutter (who,
unlike Kontis’, is absent from the story), to a thoroughly untraditional fairy
godmother who must be summoned with words that Gremlin cannot quite seem to
remember, to a wombat much given to lantern-swinging and uttering quotations in
Latin. Non-Latin speakers, which would include almost everybody, may find this
last element a trifle off-putting; in fact, several characters in the book
utter phrases in that elegant language, all of them untranslated; and there are
a couple of equally untranslated comments tossed about in French as well. Jones
uses his own erudition perhaps a trifle too much as a club to beat his readers
about the head. But on the other hand, he is fond of thoroughly bad puns, such
as the “buoys and gulls” that the adventuring children find at the seashore and
a game in which pirates throw rocks at seabirds as their captain exhorts them
to “leave no tern unstoned.” The
Adventures of Gremlin is not a book for children, although it has children
as its central characters, and in this way it does bear a strong resemblance to
traditional fairy tales. The appearance of a giant and a black knight fits the
old models, too, as does the discovery – likely to no one’s surprise – that
Gremlin is really the princess of Etaoin, abandoned as a baby and then
discovered in a thoroughly biblical (specifically Mosaic) way. On the other
hand, a bear licensed to eat traitors and a poet who writes really awful
limericks and then attributes deep meaning to them are characters right out of
Jones’ offbeat imagination. And speaking of offbeat, one truly timeless and
completely delightful element of The
Adventures of Gremlin is its visualization by Edward Gorey (1925-2000),
whose illustrations of the major and minor characters are often laugh-out-loud
hilarious (“the muse of mal de mer”
and an incongruously dressed pirate leader with one wooden leg and one very
hairy flesh-and-blood one are two of the latter). Gorey fans will relish his
handling of the portrayal of the Red Cross Knight, whom Gremlin accompanies as
he attempts to overcome the seven deadly sins and, falling one short, decides
to go back and explore the ones he missed. The skeletal children who “go by the
names of the maladies” they contract in a dungeon where Gremlin is held for a
time give Gorey a chance to show the “walking cadaver” look with which he is
often identified, but it is the touches of humor that are more noteworthy here:
the constantly changing words on Zeppelin’s clothing, for example, and the
peculiar creature that Gremlin imagines to be the secret admirer with whom she
falls in love after he writes her a series of “singularly moving and simple”
but decidedly illiterate letters. The
Adventures of Gremlin is a pleasure and an oddity, perhaps not in that
order – a small book that takes its fairy-tale heritage quite a bit less than
seriously and, as a result, produces quite a bit more amusement than it
otherwise might.